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(P)ATA and SATA Drives: Completely Incompatible?

DerrickDerrick Registered User regular
edited June 2008 in Moe's Stupid Technology Tavern
Basically, I have an old as dirt Hard drive (60gigs. Yeah, I know), and it's just not practical to keep a drive that size anymore. I'm looking to add or upgrade to another drive. Every drive I see on New Egg is SATA, and while my motherboard supports it, the drive I currently use is ATA. I'm wondering if there exists a way to use both or if I will have to just do a full replacement?

Steam and CFN: Enexemander
Derrick on

Posts

  • BubbaTBubbaT Registered User regular
    edited June 2008
    Do you need to boot off the PATA drive or just get files from it?

    If you just need to retrieve files you could use a PATA->SATA converter like this, or get a PCI IDE card like this, or buy an external enclosure like this that will connect via USB or Firewire.

    BubbaT on
  • Monolithic_DomeMonolithic_Dome Registered User regular
    edited June 2008
    Wait, so your motherboard has both PATA plugs and SATA plugs?

    Should be no problem.

    Monolithic_Dome on
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  • DerrickDerrick Registered User regular
    edited June 2008
    Hmm the OS is on the PATA drive so I'd have to boot off of it unless I just reformatted. I could wipe the drive and have the SATA be the OS with the PATA as a backup however.

    Thanks!

    Derrick on
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  • KyanilisKyanilis Bellevue, WARegistered User regular
    edited June 2008
    You can use both drives. I have a PATA drive in my mostly SATA computer (3 SATA drives, one PATA). I can modify the boot order in the BIOS, even though windows is on a SATA. It should work just fine so long as your motherboard has slots for both.

    Kyanilis on
  • TransparentTransparent Registered User regular
    edited June 2008
    There are issues in a mixed environment. I have two raptors on an SATA raid that are my OS drive, and a PATA drive for my media. The windows installer puts the bootloader on the PATA drive no matter what I do. So when I install windows I have to unplug the PATA drive, install windows, then plug it back in.

    No big deal since I don't reinstall that often, but it is worth mentioning that little stuff like that does happen.

    Transparent on
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  • KhavallKhavall British ColumbiaRegistered User regular
    edited June 2008
    The only problem I can think of is that the PATA drive needs to have its jumper set, but if you're using only one PATA drive that shouldn't really be a problem.

    It's not quite the same, but I've got a PATA DVD drive and two SATA HDDs and I didn't even touch the jumpers on the PATA drive and everything still works fine and I've never had any problems getting all of them to work... with the only exception that when I replace a part that requires me to completely deconstruct the computer and put it back together again I always have problems getting everything to detect correctly, but once it does in normal use everything works just fine.

    Khavall on
  • ToyDToyD Registered User regular
    edited June 2008
    Transparent has the same issue I have noticed as well. When you reformat, make sure you only have SATA drives. Windows seems to think that BIOS's cannot change boot order of devices and always sticks it on the first PATA drive. Just disconnect power to that drive during reformat, then once you're able to load into windows off of the SATA drive, plug the PATA back in.

    I have 2 SATA and 1 PATA drive working just fine in my desktop.

    ToyD on
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